The following letter from Australian anti-war and Latin American solidarity activist Joan Coxsedge—who is also a former member of the Victoria state parliament--originally appeared in an Australian-Cuban solidarity group’s newsletter).
March 30, 2014
"Dear Comrades,
"Where to start? Once upon a time we lived in a fair brown
land. Most of it’s still brown and used to be fair, or so we thought, but today
it’s like living in a nightmare with right-wing sell-out merchants supposedly
representing us in parliament handing over their authority to the privateers
and flogging off everything not nailed to our shrinking floorboards. Don’t
these nincompoops know that once our public assets are sold, they’re gone for
all time? Kaput! No money coming in to government coffers
while costs to mug punters like us go through the roof and basic maintenance
goes down the drain along with any public accountability. Look what happened to
our once-great SEC, Gas and Fuel, public health system and Board of Works.
Buggered. Now it’s Medibank’s turn. Off to the private knackery leading us ever
closer to what passes for health care in the US of A. Despite keeping other
health providers in line and returning healthy annual profits, these
certifiable lunatics are planning to build roads from the sale of our assets,
when we are screaming out for decent public transport and decent public
everything else. In the meantime Lords
and Ladies, climate change is upon us.
" Last week my friend Tony Benn died. Loved by many, loathed
by the establishment, Tony never stopped fighting for socialism, for unions,
for his constituents and anything to do with peace and justice. An eloquent speaker,
he often expressed disgust at the moral vacuity of Britain’s Labour Party that
he believed had lost its way. He loathed Tony Blair but never left the party,
spending the last years of his life on internationalism, solidarity, equality
and anti-war activities. Another fine
man died suddenly in England at almost the same time. Bob Crow, general
secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union (RMT) was only 52. A
dedicated socialist and militant champion of workers, Bob Crow worked
tirelessly to improve their lot. A
passionate voice for safety on the railways and for those who worked on them,
he never held back from calling a strike.
Like Tony Benn, Bob Crow was demonised by the right-wing press.
" A different kind of man altogether, Barack Obama, who’s been
in power long enough to do something worthwhile, but hasn’t. People are asking,
what’s his presidency for? If there was a plot, he’s lost it. If there was a
point, few know what it is. The gap between rich and poor and white and black
have grown during his tenure, Guantanamo is still open and bankers continue
making obscene profits. In December, he pursued whistleblower Edward Snowden
and kept another, Chelsea Manning, in the clink while he told the crowd at
Nelson Mandela’s funeral, presumably with a straight face: ‘There are too many
leaders who claim solidarity with Madiba’s struggle for freedom, but do not
tolerate dissent from their own people.’
Putin must be wondering who he’s dealing with. The Americans promised
Gorbachev they wouldn't take NATO into Eastern Europe, but they did. They
withdrew from the ABM treaty and then did a deal with Poland to deploy
anti-ballistic missile bases on Poland’s border with Russia claiming their
purpose was to protect Europe against terrorists when anyone with half a brain
knows they are directed at Russia. They support terrorists in Chechnya, trained
and equipped the Georgian military and gave it the green light to attack
Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia. Washington financed ‘colour revolutions’
in Georgia and Ukraine and hope to do so in the Russian Federation itself.
Every single day, they are busily expanding NATO training forces, building
bases and making deals.
"In the real world of Washington, politicians look more like
impotent idiots compared with their real masters, the spooks and the spies who
shuffle the deck and deal the cards and hide their violent intrigues behind
bland initials - the CIA and NSA. The Soviet Union imploded in 1991 and their
careers (built on anti-communism) looked headed for extinction when 9/11 came
along and saved their bacon. The CIA embraced global torture and officialdom
looked the other way. The men in black
plucked ‘terrorists’ off the Arab street and shipped them off to less fussy
countries where US agents could use medieval methods to inflict pain and
punishment, techniques prohibited by US law.
CIA operatives even taped the cruelty for their archives. They might
have got away with it except some computer geeks blew the doors off government
secrecy. Once again, where was Mr President in all this? He didn’t fire the CIA
or NSA chieftains even though both had lied to Congress and everyone else. He didn’t launch a seriously independent
inquiry nor does he seem to understand that responsibility lies squarely with
him. Why isn’t he angry? Because he knows he’s vulnerable to reprisal.
The spies know what he knows and can always make use of it. This is the core of the game played by the
intelligence establishment and it didn’t start with Barack Obama. As the
agencies take the White House ever deeper into the black box, it becomes harder
for a president to dissent. It’s easy to
see that western-style democracy is like religion, a ritual declaration that
means bugger-all.
"I’ll leave the last word to Vladimir Putin who commented a
few weeks ago: ‘I sometimes get the feeling that somewhere across the huge
puddle, in America people sit in a lab and conduct experiments as if with rats,
without actually understanding the consequences of what they are doing.’
"Joan Coxsedge"
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